TV Highlight AND TRAILER: Urban Myths returns to Sky Arts

Stuart Chandler

Urban Myths, Thursday April 12, 9pm, Sky Arts & NOW TV

After putting its own comic spin on a host of little-known urban legends back in January 2017, Sky Arts dramatises yet more extraordinary stories from cultural history.

Last year, they presented a collection of apocryphal tales featuring Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Samuel Beckett and Andre the Giant, Cary Grant and Timothy Leary, and even Adolf Hitler, and now more skeletons are set to emerge from the closet of the art world’s biggest names.

This time, the spotlight falls on Salvador Dali and Alice Cooper’s artistic weekend in New York, The Sex Pistols’ infamous anarchic appearance on Bill Grundy’s TV show in 1976, David Bowie and Marc Bolan’s unusual bonding session in a Soho office in the mid-60s and hip hop group Public Enemy’s unexpected carshare with a doting fan.

This new series kicks off with Billy Wilder’s love-hate working relationship with Marilyn Monroe and also presents a perplexing story involving Agatha Christie, Johnny Cash’s near-fatal encounter with one of his pet ostriches and some Live Aid backstage mischievousness.

Bringing these stories to life are a host of acclaimed writers and directors and a stellar cast, including Jack Whitehall, Introduction Noel Fielding, Gemma Arterton, Sheila Hancock, Paul Kaye, Daniel Mays, Steve Pemberton and James Purefoy, to name just a few. You couldn’t make it up.

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